How Lifting Made Me Smarter
Takeaway Points:
Often, physical activity improves more of our lives than just our bodies, it helps our brains, too.
Regular exercise can help with undertanding organization, practice, goal setting, and finding meaning in what you’re learning. When the things you learn personally mean something to you, it’s more likely you’ll retain that knowledge.
Some of the physical benefits of lifting - energy regulation, improved sleep, and mood stabilization - helps us be more attentive and energetic, aiding in the learning process.
Recently I started reading the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. The central thesis of the book is essentially that exercise has a lot more than benefits in terms of health and fitness - it also tends to help make us smarter, too. The book draws on neuroscience research as well as case studies from schools which implemented smarter physical education programs, to make the case that often, physical activity makes us just… better at everything in our lives.
I would tend to agree, but then again, I’m biased because I was a classic example of someone who benefited from exercise in that exact way.
I was always generally active as a kid thanks to my parents, who pushed me to try out for sports, join the boy scouts, and so on. But I was never really good at any of it, and none of it really clicked for me. I was never good at traditional sports, and I hated running. It wasn’t until my struggles with depression and anxiety that I started really trying to lift weights, and fell in love with it.
Lifting changed my life in tons of ways. Before that period, I was mostly just interested in reading books, playing video games, and having a girlfriend. I didn’t care much about my schoolwork, and had mediocre grades to show for it. I skated by in school on a bare minimum amount of effort. In general, I either knew things or I didn’t - I didn’t bother studying, didn’t do much of my homework, and slept through a lot of my classes.
Lifting made me recognize the value of organization, regular practice, setting goals and working towards them, and finding meaning in the things that I studied. My sleep got better, and I was able to pay more attention in classes. It wasn’t an immediate thing, instead being more of a gradual process - but still, it happened.
I think that a lot of what we call “intelligence” is often not exactly due to innate factors, but rather our ability to take the right kind of organized approach. When you truly want to learn, enjoy learning, set proper goals for yourself, and are sure to use repetition and practice to ensure that the things you learn actually stay in your brain - it’s a lot more fun than just memorizing things for a test and then promptly forgetting them. When you imbue the things that you’re learning with personal meaning, they’re much more likely to stick.
There are lots of things that I absolutely would not have been able to accomplish if it hadn’t been for lifting weights. Lifting weights got me through university, and it calmed down my anxiety enough that I could have a relatively normal social life. Lifting weights taught me the generalized meta-skill of skill acquisition, and in learning to be a better coach and a better lifter, I also learned how to be a better student, a better learner, and a more adaptable human being. I was able to learn Danish, and relearn French, thanks to the skills I developed in the process of lifting weights.
Another valuable benefit of lifting weights, aside from that way that it helps to regulate your mood and sleep, and requires you to organize your time better, is that it has a powerful ability to help regulate your energy levels throughout the day. Your energy levels throughout the day are partially dependent on things like your body’s ability to process and use energy sources effectively, and this improves as a result of exercise. When you’re not so good at processing energy, or aren’t giving it the right kind of fuel that it needs at the right time, your body can often feel sluggish, your head dizzy. As a teenager I had terrible energy levels, in part because of my terrible sleep and in part because of my disorganized exercise - as an adult, I rarely have those issues anymore, and when I do, it’s usually because I went off my usual routines.
At the end of the day, fitness gets a bad rap, because culturally we associate often associate it with a certain kind of gung-ho, hypermasculine, unintelligent culture - but the reality is that fitness is for everybody, everyone can benefit, and the benefits of fitness extend well beyond the aesthetics of looking good.
Of course, most people reading this probably don’t just need to be told, once again, that fitness is good for you - we all know this, to some extent or another, and most of us struggle with actually acting on that knowledge effectively. We struggle to know what to do, what kinds of training are going to be most effective, what we should do with our diet to support our training efforts, how to fit it into our schedules, and so on.
Luckily, it turns out that you probably have to work out less than you think to get solid results. Also luckily, I’ve got plenty of resources on how to get started. Any amount of exercise is better than nothing, and most of what’s needed is to stick to it consistently for a long period of time.
I’ve always believed that fitness did make me smarter - it made me more organized, better regulated, and helped me feel strong and capable of taking on new challenges throughout my life. It’s stabilized me when I went through rough times, and been a constant companion. I started working as a trainer and a coach because I wanted to help other people see the same benefits.
As always, I’m generally taking on new clients - if you’re interested, don’t hesitate to reach out!
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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